The Anaconda Plan

The First Battle of Bull Run was the first major battle of the Civil War, was fought in Virginia, near Manassas, on July 21, 1861. The major general of the government armed detachment was Brigadier General Irwin McDowell, whose forces consisted of 30,000 men split into five divisions. General Joseph E. Johnston directed the Confederate armed detachment, with about 22,000 men, though his armed detachment was not yet organized. Bull Run was battled to fight back Richmond, which the Union considered they could hurry, and end the war quickly. McDowell's troops endured substantially from inexperience, but his designs were conceived for know-how troops. This provided the Confederates time to cut into in, and when the slow-moving amalgamation army finally come to the battlefield, need of coordination between officers didn't permit the amalgamation to take advantage of its better numbers. The battle was mostly a stalemate until the appearance of Confederate reinforcements, who compelled the amalgamation to withdraw back to Washington. In this battle, the amalgamation endured about 2900 casualties, and the Confederates had about 2000. This assault, though a Confederate triumph, was not very decisive. Although the total number of Union troops at Bull Run was about 35,000 and the Confederates had about 32,500 only about 18,000 men on each edge were actually committed in battle(Dufour, p76).

The Anaconda design is the name broadly directed to an summarize scheme for subduing the seceding states in the American municipal War. Proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized the blockade of the south ports, and called for an accelerate down the Mississippi stream to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by the vociferous faction who liked a more vigorous prosecution of the conflict, and who compared it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim. The snake likeness caught on, giving the suggestion its popular title (McPherson, p23).

In the early days of the municipal War, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's suggested strategy for the war against the South had two famous characteristics: first, all docks in the seceding states were to be rigorously blockaded; second, a strong column of possibly 80,000 men should use the Mississippi stream as a main road to push absolutely through the Confederacy. Aspearhead comprising of a somewhat little amphibious force, army troops conveyed by vessels and sustained by gunvessels, should accelerate rapidly, capturing the Confederate places down the stream in sequence. They would be pursued by a more customary army, marching behind them to protected the victories. The culminating assault would be for the outposts below New Orleans; when they dropped, the stream would be in Federal hands from its source to its mouth, and the rebellion would be slash in two(Elliott, p55).

The entire strategy could not be implemented immediately, as no warships of the type envisaged for the Mississippi crusade existed. For example, the U.S. Navy was too little to enforce the blockade in the first months of the war. It would take time to gather ...